


Final Pretense

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-04-15
Updated: 2001-04-15
Packaged: 2018-11-21 00:19:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11346120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: A Krycek vignette after the last episode.





	Final Pretense

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Final Pretense by Broken Angel

Author: Broken Angel  
Title: Final Pretense  
Feedback:   
Webpage: http://araxdelan.tripod.com/  
TotalParts: 1  
Status: Complete  
Pairing: M/K  
Rating: Not Rated  
Spoilers: Seasons 8 & 9  
Summary: A Krycek vignette after the last episode.  
AuthorNotes: I live for feedback!  
Disclaimer: All characters belong to 1013, FOX, and Chris Carter

* * *

Final Pretense  
by Broken Angel

Today, I found out that you were dead. The shock hit me hard, like a physical blow - one sharp strike to the solar plexus that left me gasping. When I raised my head to speak to the man who told me, he was gone.

It was somehow expected, this news, and even more oddly, it was somehow appropriate. That you should be dead. That you should die before me. You deserve it, after all - the final, soothing touch of oblivion, the end to your futile quest for anything that isn't a lie, for any shining reality that you could grasp, even for an instant before it is ripped away from you once more. At least, that is the peace that I imagine for you, the peace that I crave myself - and would take - if it weren't for the fact that I've been fighting tooth and nail for survival so long that it has become an instinct, a 'me against the world' mentality that traps me in your paranoid mindset.

Former mindset, I should say, because there is nothing left of that once-bright mind but a slowly decaying greyness that Dr. Scully will pick up and weigh in her impersonally white latex gloves before resigning herself to her own personal death, trapped alone in her too-large apartment with a baby that may or may not be human gestating inside her once-barren womb. She will mourn for you, may even cry a little over the evening glass of red wine that will soon have to be discontinued for the sake of the baby's health.

Later that evening, Skinner will call to make sure that she's doing all right, his gruff tones over the phone careful not to betray his fury at their mutual loss. You never realized how much you meant to them - to her in particular, but to Skinner too - that endlessly stubborn will hurling itself against their combined skepticism time and again, the bright grin at some lunatic occurence that you alone would find amusing... the little things. The two of them will speak of these minutae for a while - long enough to make me feel like an eavesdropper - before the conversation will turn to the delicate potential of a relationship that the two of them may be creating, and you will depart from their conversation and thoughts, leaving me half-blinded by the pictures they've created of you in all your various forms.

Their voices will murmer unheard into the surveillance equipment they are unaware of until I flip the switch and turn off the machine, retreating with my thoughts to the hushed darkness of my bedroom, where I will turn each image over in my mind until they form a cohesive order that I can add to my increasing collection of memories that I have stolen from the late-night conversations between your former partner and former boss since your disappearance. It is pathetic, re-creating you like this, in ways and moods that I never saw while you were alive, but for reasons I can't understand, I need to do this, to hold on in memory to what I could never touch at any other time, in any other way.

And I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in that Tunisian prison cell, never to have set you on that last doomed path to abduction and death, never come back to your life from behind Skinner's too-broad shoulders, looking into your eyes while he held your fists away from my face and seeing in them no hope of forgiveness, no hope that I could ever redeem myself from the mold you had cast for me.

Would I have died there, in that too hot, too bright place? Or would I have survived it, as I have so many other things, freed myself from it, emerged with a few more scars, a few more bruises, and the knowledge that I'd be able to fight for one more day, one more hour?

Either way - would it have changed your death?

Or would you have gone on dying a bit at a time, solving one more insignifigant X-File after another, until the disease that hid itself in the back of your brain finally had its way with you? It was the knowledge that you were dying, that prompted me to contact that cancerous bastard once more, to ask for his help. It was in the hope that Smith and his friends would save you that I set you on the trail of that UFO in Oregon - an action that apparently led only to an earlier grave than you would have otherwise occupied.

I can only wonder which death you would have preferred.

This way, at least, you might have seen your truth, the proof for which you had searched your entire life. Maybe they even answered some of your questions before they killed you. They would have shown no mercy for your pain, this I know from experience. They have no concept of human suffering, or of human desires, and were probably unaware of just how much pain - if any - they caused you. I have a feeling that you cursed me with your last breath.

I hope I'm wrong about that.

I also hope you knew, somehow, what I did to that cigarette-smoking son of a bitch, hope too, that you know just how hard it was for me to refrain from telling him that his death was for you. For me. For us, and what we could have been if I had told you the truth - once, just once - while I still had the chance of redemption.

Scully and Skinner will continue their murmured conversation far into the night, and at some point, he will call her by her first name, with a warmth in his voice that will surprise them both. They will be even more surprised when she responds in kind, his name soft on her lips despite the weight of change that it brings. They will draw closer, and somehow, during this long, awful night, they will come to terms with each other, as well as with your loss.

And I will lie on my back in my sterile white bed, conjuring up images that never were from memories that were never mine, imagining that I can keep trying to win this war, this battle for a life and a planet that I no longer want, that I can motivate myself through one final pretense - that I can make peace with your ghost.

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Archived: 00:25 03/25/01 


End file.
